Mother guilty of killing four-year-old son

Amanda Hutton has been found guilty of manslaughter of her four-year-old son, Hamzah Khan, found mummified in a cot where he had been left dead for nearly two years, in Bradford, in 2011.

In one of the most shocking cases the country has ever seen, it took police two hours before they found the body of Hamzah Khan. Amanda, 43, had buried the body of Hamzah Khan under piles of clothes and shoes in a travel cot. He had died two years earlier.

The police only visited the property of Amanda Hutton after neighbours complained of her throwing rubbish into their gardens.

Det Supt Lisa Griffin, senior investigating officer in the police inquiry said, "Amanda Hutton had many opportunities to accept the support that was offered to her and many opportunities to engage with the professionals that are there to support her and her family and she chose not to.

"She was obstructive, she was difficult and she failed in her ability to parent that child, to look after his basic needs and sadly he died in the most difficult of circumstances."

She also added that she “found this particular case distressing,” and that the house had been in “squalid condition”.

“We know now that Hamzah died of malnutrition,” said the police spokesperson.

Hamzah had been found wearing a baby grow that would fit a child no older than nine months.

Malcolm Taylor of Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement read out in front of Bradford Crown Court, “ It is heart breaking to contemplate the suffering of Hamzah Khan.”

Amanda Hutton had already pleaded guilty of child neglect and preventing the burial of the body. She had claimed that Hamzah had struggled to eat and he died suddenly. Hutton denied having an alcohol problem and said that it only began after the death of Hamzah.

The two-week trial heard how Hamzah’s body had been kept in a house in terrible squalor with five other children. Hutton has admitted a charge of child cruelty in relation to these other children aged between 5 and 13.

Hutton had accused Hamzah’s father, Aftab Khan, of being violent. The jury heard that Khan had urged police to check on the children's welfare, after he was arrested for the December 2008 assault. In December 2009, Hamzah was dead and the court heard no evidence that a police check had taken place. Aftab Khan said that Hutton had prevented him seeing Hamzah throughout the 21-month period that he was dead.

On the day Hamzah had died, Hutton had gone to the supermarket. She claimed she had planned to speak to a pharmacist about Hamzah’s declining weight but another of her children said she had gone to buy materials for the other child’s school project.

Hutton told the court how she had rushed home when her oldest son, Tariq, phoned saying that Hamzah’s eyes were “rolling back in his head”.

She denied that she had stopped to buy cigarettes on the way home and insisted she had not phoned for a takeaway pizza and curry within hours of Hamzah's death, a claim made by one of her children. Amanda Hutton did not call for an ambulance.